


The Happiest Place on Earth

by Frea_O



Series: The Greaterverse [9]
Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Disneyland, F/M, Fish out of Water, Four children vs. two adults, Gen, Kidfic, Outing, Spies and kids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-11
Updated: 2012-01-14
Packaged: 2017-10-29 13:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frea_O/pseuds/Frea_O
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Anaheim sits 85 acres packed with people, animatronics, very few exits, and surrounded by traffic slower than your average tortoise. Sounds like the perfect place to take the number one intelligence asset in the country…and his 5-year-old daughter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Breakfast

“You okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“I’m fine,” Sarah said again, shooting a look at Chuck.

He reached in through the open driver’s window and gently pried one of her hands from the steering wheel. When he laughed, she narrowed her eyes. “We’re not leaving for another hour, you know. Vi’s not even awake yet, let alone dressed and ready to go. You can get out of the car.”

If she got out of the minivan, Sarah thought, she was probably never getting into it again. “I’m fine,” she said a third time.

“Suit yourself.” Chuck shrugged.

Sarah sighed and reluctantly let go, nodding her thanks when Chuck held the door open for her. “The guys at the office said it’s the safest model they have,” she said, brushing her hands dry on her jeans. “It holds up to eight, since the seat in the middle folds down.”

“Excellent. C’mon in, I’ll get you some coffee.”

They headed up the driveway to Chuck’s place, waving to Casey as he headed into the Spy Casa. Casey had driven her to the base to pick up the minivan—the one _he_ should have been driving, since he’d originally lost the rock-paper-scissors game. Apparently, fate, a case of tonsillitis, and Ellie’s work schedule didn’t believe in the outcome of rock-paper-scissors, though.

“Vi’s not up yet?” Sarah asked as Chuck held open the front door for her. “Last time I saw her, she was—”

“Bouncing-off-the-walls excited? Yeah. That tends to lead to a pretty hard crash. She’s been out like a light since early.” Chuck yawned as he poured two cups of coffee.

“And what time did _you_ get to sleep?”

“I got about six hours, I’ll be fine.”

“Okay. Because if you end up crashing and leaving me alone with all of those kids in the middle of Disneyland, I swear to God—”

“Don’t you, like, regularly jump out of planes and storm beaches and stuff?”

“You’ve mixed me up with the Navy SEALs again.”

“Still.”

“There are four of them,” Sarah said, her voice flat. “And only two of us.”

“They’re small. They don’t count as much.” Chuck’s grin blossomed as he sipped his coffee. “Also, easily portable. If I didn’t know better, I’d say the great Sarah Walker was scared.”

“Not scared. Cautious, and reasonably so. This enemy is unpredictable and cannot be reasoned or bargained with.”

“Clearly you’ve never tried to bribe a five-year-old. Also: enemy? You’ve been spending too much time around Casey.”

Sarah narrowed her eyes yet again and opened her mouth to reply, but the sound of footsteps on the stairs made both of them look over. Violet stumbled in, dragging Bun-Bun by one of his little platypus feet. The stuffed animal suffered the indignity with aplomb, even when he was whacked against the edge of the kitchen island.

Vi’s eyes lit up when she saw Sarah. “Hi!” As had become her habit, she launched herself into a running leap. Sarah caught the five-year-old. Chuck caught the toy. “What’re you doing here so early? Are you going to stay? Can we have French toast?” Evidently trusting that Sarah wouldn’t drop her, she arched back to look at her father—upside down. “Can we, Daddy?”

“I don’t know,” Chuck said while Sarah grinned and shifted her grip. “Do you want French toast, or do you want Disneyland? You can’t have both.”

Vi’s eyes went wide. “Disneyland!” she breathed, as though she had totally forgotten. She began to bounce, and Sarah laughed as she deposited the smallest Bartowski on the ground, where Vi promptly began to spin in circles. “Disneyland, Disneyland, Disneyland!”

“Tell us how you really feel.” Chuck grinned. “C’mon, let’s go get you dressed while Sarah makes us breakfast, huh?”

“Oh, I’m making breakfast?” Sarah raised an eyebrow.

“Bartowski rules, Sarah. Everybody pulls their weight.” Chuck stuck his tongue out at her, laughing when she shoved at his arm.

Since Vi was still running around the kitchen with that insane amount of energy only small children and nuclear reactors seemed to possess, Sarah figured she was getting the easy end of the deal. Still, that didn’t stop her from snatching Vi up on the next lap. “Good morning, Miss Violet,” she said, and deposited the squirming bundle into Chuck’s arms. “There. Got my good morning hug. Now, you two go get ready. I’ll, uh, whip something up.”

“There’s eggs in the fridge,” Chuck offered helpfully over his shoulder as he hauled the five-year-old out of the kitchen.

“Does Ellie buy egg whites?” Sarah called after him.

“Ew!” was the reply from both father and daughter.

“Guess not. Hello, cholesterol.” Sarah rolled her sleeves up and dove in. They’d be walking a lot today, so they’d need the protein, she reminded herself. She had been up half the night worrying, but the other half had been spent studying maps of Disneyland that she had downloaded from headquarters. Disneyland was _huge_ , she’d discovered. It had taken awhile to locate strategic exit points, spots that she could safely stash Chuck and the others if something were to go wrong, routes that would provide lots of cover if it came down to that. She had programmed all of these into her phone and was carrying—along with a bottle of sunscreen—a miniature first aid kit with extra band-aids, the numbers to every hospital within 50 miles of Anaheim, special plastic-compound knives that wouldn’t alert the scanners, extra water bottles, bobby-pins, emergency cash, a digital camera, a back-up battery for her cell phone, and Tic-Tacs.

Even so, she felt oddly vulnerable without her gun. She didn’t like that feeling, even though escorting around five- and six-year-olds while armed to the teeth probably wasn’t the wisest idea.

“Okay, so run-down on the kids,” Chuck said, coming back into the kitchen alone while Sarah finished up breakfast. He stopped and stared. “What is that?”

“Egg in a basket.”

Chuck gaped. “What have you done to that poor, innocent toast?”

“Shut up, you’ll like it.”

“You’ve killed the toast. Megabyte, Sarah has _murdered_ the toast.” Chuck gave his daughter a scandalized look as she wandered in.

Vi pulled herself up onto one of the island stools and leaned forward on her elbows to get a good look at the frying pan. “What’d you do to it?”

“It’s called egg in a basket,” Sarah said. “It’s toast with eggs in the middle of it. And it’s really good, I promise.” This last was aimed at the drama queen currently pretending to mourn the rest of the loaf of bread on the counter. “You like eggs, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And toast?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“You’ll like this.” Sarah gave Chuck the stink-eye. “And you’ll eat it, Chuck Bartowski.”

“Oh, man, she’s starting to sound like Aunt Ellie.” Chuck grinned conspiratorially at his daughter. “Better listen up when she talks like that.”

“That’s right.”

“Or what?”

“Or we’ll go to Disneyland without you,” Sarah said.

This time, Chuck put both hands over his heart, as though she’d shot him, obviously overacting for Vi’s benefit. “You’d really do that to me?” he asked, and Vi giggled. He pretended to glare at her. “Did I ask for comments from the peanut gallery, squirt?”

Vi giggled harder. Sarah lifted an eyebrow. “I’m the one driving, aren’t I?”

“Oh. Well, in that case, guess I’ll go watch a movie or something. Have a good time at Disneyland, ladies.” Chuck waved on his way out.

“No!” The protest was made by both Vi and Sarah, one a little more panicked than the other. Vi bounced on the stool. “C’mon, Daddy, you promised me you’d take me on the Teacups! You _have_ to go! We’ll eat the baskets, won’t we?”

“What she’s saying is ‘don’t leave me alone with Sarah,’“ Sarah said dryly, her initial panic subsiding when Chuck peeked around the corner, grinning.

“Nuh-uh,” Violet told her. “I like you. You’re fun, and you look like Tink.”

Again, Sarah wondered who the hell this Tink was, but she wasn’t going to reveal that she wasn’t cool enough to know. “Thanks. I like you, too.” She hooked an arm around Vi’s neck and gave her a one-armed hug as she set a plate in front of her. “Now eat up. And no more comments from _this_ peanut gallery.” The latter was said to Chuck, who had sidled up onto the far stool, leaving the middle for Sarah.

He murmured another eulogy for the toast, but seemed to dig in with a real appetite. Apparently, even the prospect of Disneyland brought out his inner goofball.

“So, as I was saying before the toast was disemboweled,” Chuck said, “a brief run-down on the kids. You’ve met Moniqua, of course.”

“Of course.”

“Best friend extraordinaire, bit of a picky eater so that will make mealtimes interesting, but she’s not allergic to anything we have to worry about today.”

“And she likes Ariel,” Violet added. “That’s her favorite princess.”

“Oh. Uh, which one’s yours?” It was probably best to know these things, though Sarah didn’t really have the first clue who Ariel was.

“Cinderella,” Violet said, and bounced again. “Lily likes her best, too. She has yellow hair.”

“That would mean Cinderella’s a blonde, not Lily,” Chuck explained in an undertone.

Sarah ran a hand through her hair and nodded. “Okay. And Lily’s one of the others going with us?”

“Right. Lily of the younger brother with Tonsillitis. Which means that Lily’s other brother, Landon will be joining us today. And Cynthia sends her thank-yous, by the way, for being willing to go along on this crazy jaunt.”

“Cynthia is…”

“Lily and Landon’s mom.”

“Lucas has a sore throat,” Violet put in. “Lily can’t go ‘less we take Landon, too.”

“And that would be, if I’m remembering this right, no strawberries for Landon, and we’ll have to carry an inhaler for Lily.”

“Check. I’ve got my bag in the car.”

“I have of course prepared an iPod road trip mix that will blow all of your socks off,” Chuck went on, scraping his plate clean before going for seconds. “We’ll be working on the music education of these young minds, molding them to perfection.” He reached around Sarah to give Violet a mini-noogie.

She giggled. “Did you put Taylor Swift on there, Daddy?”

“Much to my dismay, I did.”

Sarah glanced at Chuck. “New country artist that Ellie likes,” he said. “Thankfully, she’s not bad, since she’s Vi’s favorite and we listen to her every single time we go anywhere.” He heaved a dramatic sigh.

Violet gave him the prim five-year-old look she did so well. “Not _every_ time. Just most times. I like ‘Our Song.’”

“Awesome. All done?”

“Yup. Can I say good-bye to Sir before we go?”

“I’ll walk you over,” Sarah said when Chuck looked uncertain. “I need to double-check and make sure I haven’t forgotten anything, anyway. Meet you out at the van in five minutes?”

“Sure.”

Something closer to ten minutes later—saying good-bye to Sir always took a bit—they were in the van, on the way to pick up the other kids, and after that, to Disneyland. It might have been called the Happiest Place on Earth, but Sarah couldn’t help but think it might be one of the scariest, too.


	2. The Front Gates

The drive started not with the sing-along that Sarah secretly feared, but with of all things, a lecture. She kept her eyes on the road so as not to telegraph her surprise to the kids when Chuck turned around in the passenger seat and gave the kids a solemn speech about why they had to keep either Chuck or Sarah in sight at all times. Even Landon—whom Sarah could already tell was going to be trouble—gave Chuck a wide-eyed look. Perhaps they were wondering where the cool Mr. Bartowski had gone, as all of the kids looked a little scared and confused.

Until, that was, Chuck finished with, “And you know what the most important rule of today is, young ladies and young man?”

Four silent children shook their heads in unison.

Chuck’s grin sprouted. “Good thing it’s an easy one, then. The most important rule of today is that we all have the best day ever!”

The van broke out in cheers, so that even Sarah had to laugh. Instantly, the tension melted away. Chuck twisted back around in the seat to face forward as Sarah pulled the van onto the freeway.

“Did you see their faces?” Chuck asked, still grinning.

“You’re clearly very scary, Mr. Chuck,” Sarah said, using the kids’ name for him. She herself was back to being Miss Sarah, which felt so distant from Agent Walker that they might as well be completely different women. Of course, that didn’t excuse Agent Walker from checking the rearview mirror for tails while Miss Sarah drove the minivan.

In the back, the kids started talking over and around each other, describing which rides they would absolutely die if they didn’t go on and which princesses or characters they wanted to see. This seemed to involve a lot of gesticulating and—much to Sarah’s unease—explosion noises.

Chuck hit play on the iPod to drown them out. “Terrifying,” he said. “Hopefully, some of what I said got through.”

“Maybe you should have waited until we were closer?”

“Are you kidding? Then nothing gets through the excitement.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“You never did the theme park thing as a kid?”

Her father had talked their way into a lot of carnivals, Sarah remembered, and she’d ridden the Ferris Wheel and Tilt-A-Whirl a few times, but those experiences, the point had been to lighten wallets and empty pockets. They’d never actually taken a day to do nothing but goof off at a place like Disneyland.

Too much security around, Sarah thought, to pull cons, even in the 80s.

“No?” Chuck said when she didn’t reply, as she was wont to do whenever he probed into her past. “Bummer. Well, you can make up for some of it today. Their excitement is pretty infectious.”

“And they aren’t the only ones,” Sarah said.

Chuck smiled and linked his hands behind his head, stretching out as much as the passenger seat would allow. “I’m not getting on your nerves, am I?”

“No, no, you’re not. It’s,” and Sarah searched for a word, “cute.”

“I dare you not to have fun today, Walker.”

“If I take up that challenge, you’ll just try harder, won’t you?”

“You know it. I’m just sad Casey couldn’t come along.”

Chuck and Sarah glanced at each other—and burst out laughing.

Immediately, Violet leaned forward. “What’s so funny, Daddy?”

“Nothing, sweetie.” But Chuck’s grin turned devilish. “We were just thinking that Major Casey Sir might be sad if we don’t bring him anything from Disneyland today.”

“We should get him mouse ears!”

“Excellent idea, my mightiest of Megabytes. We’ll get him mouse ears. He’ll _love_ that!”

“You do know he can kill you with his bare hands, right?” Sarah asked as Vi clapped and leaned back to whisper a secret to Moniqua, who’d ended up in the far backseat next to Landon.

Chuck waggled his eyebrows. “Good thing it wasn’t my idea, huh?”

“Miss Sarah?” Landon’s voice cut through the van.

“Ah, yes?”

“There’s a hole in your van.”

“What?” She turned so quickly, only Agency reflexes saved her from swerving the van. Landon was right, she saw immediately. And there was no mistaking what the hole could be, not after all of her years on covert ops. She blanched.

“I mean, it’s not very big. I can just stick my finger through it—”

“Don’t do that,” Chuck said, using the parent voice.

“Where’d it come from?” Lily asked, leaning over the middle seat to get a good look.

Sarah’s mind went absolutely blank. “Uh…” She cast a pleading look at Chuck, who gave her a shrug and a “Search me” look in reply. _Real helpful, Chuck. Thanks_. “Um, it’s from…an angry woodpecker?”

Four kids and Chuck all blinked at her. “What?”

“Hey, what’s that?” Chuck suddenly pointed out the window to Violet’s right, and immediately every kid turned in place to see what he was talking about.

“I don’t see anything!” Violet said, craning to get a better look at the freeway all around them.

“You didn’t see it? Really? Shame.”

“What IS it, Mr. Chuck?”

“What didn’t we see, Daddy?”

“I don’t see it!”

“You mean, you really didn’t see the elephant?” Chuck gave the kids a shocked look. “He had a little monkey on his back and everything, and a sign, too.”

“I saw the elephant,” Lily boasted.

Chuck squinted at her, feigning suspicion. “Oh, yeah? What color was it?”

“Purple!”

“Oh, then I guess you really did see it.”

The other kids set in on Lily then, demanding details of this fictitious purple elephant with a monkey on its back, and Chuck turned around in his seat to face forward once more. Neither he nor Sarah spoke for a minute, and then Chuck finally said, in an undertone, “Bullet holes? Anything else I need to worry about in this deathmobile you’ve rented?”

“They promised me they triple-checked for any type of weapons,” Sarah said. “I even checked myself. And they said they gave me the safest model!”

Chuck eyed the backseat through the visor mirror. “Clearly.”

Thankfully, there were no more surprises—nasty or otherwise—or need for purple elephants, though they stopped once to let Moniqua use the restroom, and Chuck had to break up several arguments, especially between the two siblings (which was why, he told Sarah, he’d put them in different rows as this way they couldn’t actually reach each other without some effort). How such small creatures could make so much noise, Sarah had no earthly idea. She merely sipped coffee from the travel mug Chuck had thoughtfully prepared for her and used all of her spy skills to block out the noise and feign calm, though she did have to wonder how people with more than one kid did this every day.

Landon spotted the first sign. “Disneyland!” he shouted, and all fighting immediately stopped as the six-year-old strained against his seatbelt, pointing. “That sign says ‘Disneyland!’ We’re almost there!”

They still had awhile to go, but there was no convincing the kids of that. In the end, Chuck and Sarah just let them bounce in place and chant and cheer. Each passed sign was a new cause for celebration.

When they pulled into the parking lot itself, the excitement had spread to the front seat. Sarah covered her mouth with a hand to hide her smile as Chuck taught the kids the old Mickey Mouse club song, even going so far as to direct with all of the dignity of the finest maestro. The woman working the ticket booth seemed used to this; she wished them all a great day in all of their Disney-related activities, and waved them on without a single blink.

“Nerd,” Sarah muttered at Chuck once he turned to grin at her.

“You bet. All right, everybody, let’s fuel up.” Fruit roll-ups and granola bars appeared out of what Sarah had come to start calling the “Dad Bag” on previous outings. “Now, one more time, what is the number two thing you have to do today?”

“Keep you or Miss Sarah in sight.” The chorus was ragged, but it came from all four, even the shy Moniqua. Crumbs spewed everywhere; Sarah tried not to wince.

“And the number one thing?”

“Best day ever!”

“All right,” Chuck said in an undertone as Sarah pulled into their parking spot, “I’ll take the twins, and you keep a hold on Vi and Mo. Last chance to back out, Walker.”

“No way,” Sarah said, though her instincts screamed otherwise. “After all, I jump out of planes and storm beaches.”

“Ha, I knew it.” Wisely, when he opened the sliding door, Chuck immediately snatched up Landon before the boy could bolt. Sarah held her hand out for Moniqua, who took it without a word. Violet wrapped herself around Sarah’s other arm all the way up to the elbow and jumped, giving Sarah no choice but to swing her around. Thankfully by now, Sarah considered an old pro at this, and Violet’s other monkey antics, so she didn’t do anything the parenting manuals warned against, like accidentally dump a five-year-old onto the concrete.

The parenting manuals, Sarah figured, were probably pretty explicit about that point, though she still hadn’t cracked one open yet. She wasn’t _that_ far gone.

The girl on her other side, however, had yet to speak. “Are you excited?” Sarah asked, awkwardly searching about for some kind of conversation. She had enough of a hard time talking to adults when she wasn’t after spy things; adding a shy child to the equation just seemed like some version of cruelty from the universe.

Moniqua just nodded, her little pink barettes clacking against each other.

“Mo really wants to see the princesses,” Vi said, explaining for her best friend like she usually did. “And we’re going to see the princesses, right, Sarah?”

“Lots of princesses,” Sarah said, hoping she wasn’t inadvertently lying through her teeth. “Doing very, uh, princessy things.”

She heard a choked noise that was clearly Chuck holding back his laughter for her sake, but she shot him a narrow look anyway. He fell back on an innocent grin. “Did you know,” he told Vi and Mo, “that Sarah’s name actually means princess?”

“What?” Violet’s mouth fell open and she gave a melodramatic gasp that was completely serious thanks to the fact that she was, after all, five years old. “You’re a real princess, Sarah?”

“Try and talk your way out of this one,” Chuck said, smirking over at her.

“No, my name just means princess,” Sarah said. “I’m not really a princess.”

“Can I see your crown?”

“Does your dress change colors like Aurora’s?”

“Do you have a kingdom?”

“I think princesses are stupid.”

“Thank you, Landon,” Sarah said dryly.

“C’mon, your highness, trolley’s this way,” Chuck said, and the group moved down the row of cars to head toward the shuttle that would take them to the front gates. They managed to fit in the same row together, though Sarah had to pull the squirming Violet onto her lap to make it work, and Chuck had an arm clamped around Landon to keep him from seeing something shiny and bolting off the side. Lily and Violet held a spirited debate about whether or not any of the cars on the Dumbo ride would be painted purple like the elephant Violet (ever the skeptic) didn’t really believe Chuck or Lily had seen. When Chuck looked pained, Sarah sent him a “You started it!” look.

“Goofy!” Violet said suddenly in the middle of Lily’s counter-argument. She leaned around Sarah, pointing at the parking sign. “It’s Goofy!”

“Is he your favorite?” Sarah asked.

“Nuh-uh, I just like him cos he’s tall and he trips a lot like Daddy.”

This time it was Sarah’s turn to laugh uproariously at Chuck’s pained look.

The front gates, according to the maps Sarah had pored over the night before, led into the Main Street, a street that branched off into various parts of the park. She knew they’d be returning to that area for the parade, but for now, she kept vigilant, studying the layout, making sure that nobody seemed overly interested in their ragtag crew. It was mostly families milling around them, gathering people for tickets, doing final head-counts. Sarah disembarked with the rest of her group, looking around until Chuck called her over.

Sarah eyed the digital camera in his hands. Unlike the one she had in her bag, it didn’t give back distance readings in three dimensions, and wouldn’t shoot in various modes like infrared, but she knew to be cautious. “Pictures already?”

“We need pictures at the front gate. I mean, look at that.” He pointed at the giant Mickey Mouse topiary on the slope. “Everybody, picture time! Get together!”

“Why don’t I take the picture? You go stand with the kids. You’re Mr. Chuck, after all.”

Chuck handed over the camera, crouching down among the kids, as he stood a great deal taller than any of them. It took longer than expected since Landon pulled Lily’s hair at the last minute, and the sunshine invariably made somebody blink, but an ordeal or two later, Sarah declared the picture perfect. Which of course meant that the kids (led by Chuck, of course) insisted on a picture with Sarah, too, and another one just by themselves. Chuck topped it off by taking pictures of Lily and Landon in front of the topiary, and then Moniqua, who, despite her shyness, propped a hand on her hip and struck a pose worthy of any diva.

Sarah decided then that she quite liked Violet’s best friend.

“Shae and Cynthia have told me they want lots of pictures today since they can’t be here,” Chuck explained to Sarah in an undertone as Moniqua fell back in with the others, enduring a strangling hug from the over-excited Violet. “Make sure you get lots, okay?”

“I’ll do my best.” Sarah gave him a two-fingered salute.

“All right, troops, let’s head in,” Chuck said, and they headed toward the admissions line for the day to truly begin.

“Once more,” Sarah murmured as she followed, “into the breach.”


	3. Main Street and Fantasyland

“And you’re sure leashes aren’t an option?” Sarah asked under her breath as she made a grab for Landon. The girls, she had discovered, were pretty easy to keep nearby, as they had linked arms and were chattering away too fast for Sarah to understand. Landon was a different story. The second he saw something shiny, he bolted. If he wanted to be on one side of the street, he was going for it, rules be damned. They hadn’t even through the admissions line before Chuck and Sarah decided one would hold Landon’s hand—and snatch him up when he made a break for it—and the other would ride herd on the girls.

Since Sarah was faster, Landon duties fell to her.

“I think I’ve got some duct tape in my bag,” Chuck said as Sarah set the wriggling boy down. “We could maybe fashion something.”

Landon gave them both a cherubic grin.

“No,” Sarah said. “He’ll just chew through it.”

“That he will. All right, Lan, I don’t want to have to do this, but stay close or no Pirates of the Caribbean.”

“But—”

“You heard me.”

Landon looked at Sarah for backup, but she merely raised an eyebrow at him. Seeing no help from that quadrant, Landon sighed. He was a pretty kid, Sarah thought, though she wasn’t going to say this aloud. The mix of Hispanic and Asian heritage suited him, and once he figured that out, he was destined to be a heartbreaker. Now he simply looked beleaguered. “Yes, Mr. Chuck.”

“Good. You hold Miss Sarah’s hand for now. C’mon girls, this way.”

The group had yet to even get in line for their first ride, and Sarah was already feeling a little overwhelmed. High-octane situations with danger and noise and the overhanging probability of death hadn’t done a single thing to prepare her for Disneyland.

For one thing, there really wasn’t this much color around when people were shooting at you in the middle of the desert.

Seeing a crowd gather ahead didn’t help. Chuck, however, proved incapable of mind reading, as he steered their group right to the edge of it. Halfway there, Sarah heard the sound of harmonized singing.

“The Dapper Dans,” Chuck said by way of explanation, and the group finally came into view: four men in eye-poppingly bright striped vests with trousers to match. They even wore old-fashioned boater hats. “A real Disneyland establishment. We’re lucky we get to see this, you know. Last time Ellie and I came, there wasn’t a Dan in sight.”

“They’re all named Dan? How do they know which one is which?” Violet wanted to know.

“There’s three people named Lily at my preschool. I’m Lily C.”

“Why can’t you be Lily and they be Lily One and Lily Two?”

“Cos Miss Kinsey says that…”

All the while, the quartet some sort of love ballad that Sarah didn’t recognize—not that she was surprised. Music really wasn’t her thing. As the crowd watched, the men singled out a woman in the audience and pulled her in front, all of them taking a knee as they pledged their love, comically elbowing each other out of the way. Sarah was just grateful they hadn’t picked her, even though the woman and her family seemed to be getting a real kick out of it. Chuck took turns lifting the girls so that they could get a better look.

“Did you want to see, too?” Sarah asked Landon after a minute.

He shook his head emphatically. “Singing is stupid.”

“Okay, then.”

But when Chuck picked Lily up and the girl clapped, Landon looked torn. “Okay,” he said, digging the toe of his sandal against the pavement. “Maybe I sorta wanna see.”

Sarah bit back her laughter at that and obligingly lifted the boy, bracing him against her hip so that he could watch.

The baritone, perhaps noticing Landon’s skeptical expression, winked at the both of them. Landon gasped and slithered down Sarah’s side, intent on bragging about his achievement to his sister and the others, while Sarah shook her head and hid her smile.

“Dumbo first,” Chuck said once the Dans wandered on and the crowd dispersed. “The guide I read said the line’s slow, so better to get it out of the way first. How’s everybody doing? Anybody need a potty break? It could be a long wait, guys.”

The line to Dumbo the Flying Elephant did indeed crawl when they reached it (they had to walk through Sleeping Beauty’s Castle first, which took awhile, as the girls had a tendency to simply stop walking and gape, open-mouthed, at the tall building, while Sarah did her best to keep Landon from wandering in every direction under the sun). By the time they neared the front of the line to Dumbo, even Violet had tired of expressing her excitement over the various things they were going to see today. Four bored kids in a confined space was a recipe for trouble, not that Sarah needed reminding after the drive over. They peered through the railings and hopped around, swinging about like little monkeys, hanging off of Chuck and Sarah’s arms when they got the chance, spinning around in place.

“At this rate, they’ll be asleep by three,” Chuck said as Violet and Moniqua hopped around, arms around each other, and Sarah wasn’t sure if she agreed or not. She’d seen Violet reach the end of her reserves several times—which was kind of like hitting an off-switch—but this sort of infectious enthusiasm seemed…perpetual, somehow. “All right, Lan, Lily, break it up, you two. We don’t want to have to tell your mom you spent the whole day arguing, do we?”

Landon and Lily gave him identical innocent smiles, and Landon immediately darted behind Sarah. A favorite game of his seemed to be poking Lily or Violet and then racing to hide behind Sarah, who wasn’t at all fond of being the barrier. The one time he tried to antagonize Moniqua, though, the girl simply turned and gave him a frosty look.

He didn’t torment Moniqua again.

Chuck glanced between the two kids. “I know a lot of people have been mistaking Vi for yours, but I think maybe they got the wrong kid.”

Sarah gave him a look.

“And that’s exactly what I mean, right there.” Around them, the line began to move. “Hey, kids, I think we’re on the next one.”

“We’re going now?”

“No, not this time, but next time.”

“You going to ride?” Sarah asked.

Chuck looked over at the giant carts shaped like Dumbo the elephant and shook his head. “Nah, I’ll go with you and take pictures. We’ll be riding plenty today.”

Sarah raised her eyebrows.

Belatedly, Chuck realized what he had said and turned the color of a beet. “I meant, ah, the _rides_. You know, like Indiana Jones and—theme park rides.”

“Of course.”

“How on earth do you make _Disney_ sound dirty?”

“I am a woman of many talents.”

Chuck just went a deeper shade of red and let the subject drop. It probably wasn’t fair to do that to him, Sarah knew, not when sex was sort of the elephant in the room—and not a flying elephant-shaped cart fashioned after a Disney character, either—with them. But it felt nice to be able to get Chuck at least once at his own game. The score for the day was like Chuck: 27, Sarah: 2, so she’d take her victories where she could get them.

“You’re not gonna go on Dumbo, Miss Sarah?” Lily asked as Sarah reached back without looking to haul Landon back.

“Not this time,” Sarah said. “But I’ll watch from the side and you can wave at me, and at Mr. Chuck.”

The kids seemed appeased with that, though when their turn had finally arrived and she’d loaded Violet and Moniqua into an empty Dumbo cart, Landon of course stuck his tongue out at her.

“Charming,” she said to Chuck as they headed for the exit together.

“You do realize he’s flirting with you.”

“What?” Sarah’s surprise nearly made her stop walking.

“He’s figured out it’s a fun game to make you catch him.” Chuck was smirking as he held open the gate for her. “At his age, shoving a girl is a better way to flirt than bringing her flowers.”

“Charming,” Sarah said again.

“I think it’s cute.”

“Of course you do.”

“I mean, he’s a good kid. In twenty years, you could totally be the cougar to his—ow! No pinching.”

They took their places along the fence to watch as the pre-ride announcements that they’d heard several hundred times while in line started up. Sarah rested her elbows against the fence, figuring that if she was going to be at the theme park all day, she might as well get over her distaste with touching surfaces like that. She nearly jumped when Chuck dropped an arm around her shoulders.

His look was completely unrepentant. “Oh, c’mon, take a spy holiday.”

“That would jinx this day and you know it.”

“Well, then, don’t take a spy holiday. But relax. We’re at Disneyland. It’s the—”

“Happiest place on earth, I know,” Sarah said. Music started up as Dumbos began to rise in their flight. They began their first spin around the track almost tremulously, which seemed strange when Sarah figured the ride had to have spun around millions of times.

“Hi, Miss Sarah!”

“Hi, Daddy!”

Chuck and Sarah laughed. “It’s never going to be not obvious which group is with us,” Chuck said.

“Nope,” Sarah agreed, and they waved a couple more times until the kids grew more fascinated by the park around them than their chaperones. At this point, Sarah turned to Chuck with a furrowed brow. “He’s really flirting?”

Chuck just laughed.

“I’m really not safe from any age, am I?”

“Take it as a compliment. And just…be patient with him. He’s going to have it rough soon.” Chuck’s expression hardened briefly; it truly was strange to see that look on his face when it had nothing to do with protesting against the government, or something she and Casey had done.

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Cynthia and Jorge…” Chuck’s hand on Sarah’s shoulder flexed, and that tic in his face started up to match. “They’re having some trouble. I think Cynthia’s going to take the kids to her mother out on the east coast. Their lives are about to get disrupted and they don’t even know.”

“Kids always know,” Sarah said before she could stop herself.

Chuck’s eyebrows shot sky-high.

She didn’t offer anything else. The music from the organ in the middle of the Dumbo ride changed to some old Disney song she vaguely recognized from her own girlhood, though she couldn’t possibly have placed it now.

“I didn’t,” Chuck said, and Sarah glanced over, surprised. She’d read Chuck’s file, and he’d mentioned his parents—or lack of them, as he’d put it once—in passing, but he wasn’t the type to just offer up information. Not about that, at least. “I mean, I thought my parents were happy until my mom just didn’t come home one night.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. I mean, they’d been dancing in the kitchen two days before.” Chuck shrugged and seemed to remember himself. “And whoa is this a depressing topic for the happiest place on earth or what? See if you can’t get Vi and the others to look this way so I can get a picture?”

After Dumbo, they headed across the square to Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and this time, Chuck started the kids chanting until Sarah agreed to actually go on the ride. Apparently this had been one of his favorite rides as a kid, so nobody was excused, though he did put Violet in the same car as Sarah and took Moniqua with himself, leaving the twins in the middle car between them. About ten seconds into the ride, Sarah understood why. Their car was prone to jerk around almost violently from the minute they went through a huge set of double doors and the others drove out of sight. Violet squealed as they careened through what looked like some kind of English manor.

“You going to be okay?” Sarah asked, and then they went through a fireplace, a shower of sparks rained down next to the buggy, and Violet practically burrowed into Sarah’s side.

Violet spent the rest of the ride with her face buried in the side of Sarah’s ribcage. She wouldn’t even look up when Sarah, half-desperate, began to point at things along the ride. Thankfully, though, there were no tears when the car had finally finished its frantic race through jail and beyond.

Chuck, who’d reached the end of the ride first, was waiting with a huge grin to see how they’d liked the ride. The grin immediately faded. “Is she okay?” he asked in an undertone as Violet immediately wrapped herself around Sarah’s waist, a sign she wanted to be picked up.

“Sparks,” Sarah said, obliging her and bouncing the five-year-old against her hip. “They freaked us out a little bit, didn’t they?”

“You weren’t scared at all,” Violet said, and there was a suspicious hint of a sniffle in her voice.

“I was very scared, I promise. Those weasels were very scary,” Sarah lied, since she’d found the ride more absurd than actually frightening.

Chuck looked almost ill that he had put his daughter through such torture, and Sarah almost wanted to laugh. She bit her tongue as Chuck promised, “Don’t worry, we don’t have to ride that one ever again if you don’t want to.”

“Maybe when I’m seven,” Violet said, nodding once. The pondering look on her face told Sarah that the threat of tears had passed. “I think I’ll like it much more when I’m seven years old because I’ll be older than even Wesley then.”

Who Wesley was, Sarah had no idea. But apparently mention of this mysterious person was enough to get the group to head toward the exit en masse, returning into the sunlight. Chuck pulled them off to the side, out of the way of the crowd, and opened up the park map. “Where to next?” he asked.

“Pirates of the Caribbean!”

“Princesses!”

“Peter Pan?” This suggestion came from Moniqua, the loudest thing she’d said all day (and it was still said at a whisper). “It’s right there, Mr. Chuck. Can we go on that next?”

“And can I sit next to Miss Sarah this time?” Landon wanted to know.

Chuck gave Sarah a look: _told you so._ She rolled her eyes at back at him—when Landon couldn’t see.

“We’ll see how it goes,” Chuck said. “Why don’t we ride Peter Pan next and then maybe get a snack or something? I heard a rumor there’s Mickey Mouse shaped ice cream around here somewhere.”

That brought on a round of cheering.

“You realize that they’re going to be worse hopped up on sugar,” Sarah murmured as she allowed Moniqua and Lily to pull her along by the hand toward Peter Pan’s Flight.

“It’s Disneyland, Sarah. That’s half the fun!”

“Uh-huh. And, more importantly, they’re not the ones I’m worried about.”

Chuck mimicked Landon and stuck his tongue out at her. “Keep talking like that and I won’t buy _you_ a Mickey Mouse-shaped ice cream.”

This time, after trudging through yet another line, she ended up in one of the flying pirate ships with Landon on one side—he’d insisted—and Lily on the other. It had been years, she mused as the pre-ride announcements finished and their pirate ship moved forward on its track, since she’d even thought about Peter Pan. Wasn’t there some kind of peanut butter brand or something named Peter Pan? And just how often did they inspect the tracks and the bearings on these pirate ships? Hundreds of thousands of people came through this ride every year; was it really all that safe?

Then the ride started in earnest, flying by scenes from the old Disney movie, and she mostly forgot her worries. Landon did his best to play “cool” and think everything was stupid, but he jumped forward in his seat a few times to get a better look at the different dioramas they passed. Lily talked through the whole ride, narrating this bit or that from what she remembered of her own viewings. She occasionally leaned to the side and tried to shout back to her friends in the pirate ship behind them, until Sarah told her to keep inside the ship.

Sarah’s eyes narrowed when the sprite in the tiny green dress first appeared.

They reached the end first, but had to wait for Chuck and the girls outside instead of on the platform. It took a couple of minutes. By the time Chuck came out with Moniqua riding piggy-back and Violet galloping alongside, Lily and Landon had already begun to reenact Captain Hook and Peter Pan’s famous swordfight. Landon was Captain Hook, naturally. Sarah wasn’t sure if she was supposed to be Wendy Darling or a piece of the scenery.

“Sorry,” Chuck said. “Had a shoe malfunction, but things are all okay now. Are we ready for ice cream?”

“Spoiler,” Sarah said as the kids led the way. Chuck just grinned, again unrepentant, and she smiled back until she remembered what she’d thought of during the ride. “By the way…”

“Yes?”

“When were you going to tell me that when Vi calls me ‘Tink,’ she’s actually comparing me to a fairy?”

“Ah…” Chuck looked around for an escape route. Obviously seeing none, he fell back on the same innocent smile that she’d seen cross the kids’ faces several times in the past couple of hours. “Never?”

“I figured.”

Chuck’s smile broadened.

“What?” she asked, unsure now. When the idea hit, her eyes widened. “You’re thinking about me in the Tinkerbell dress!”

“Wh-what? No, of—of course not.”

She stared.

“Okay, maybe just a little. It’s just, it’s such an iconic dress and you’re so—you know what? Ice cream!” And like one of the kids, Chuck grabbed her hand and hauled, pulling her along so that she had no choice but to jog to keep up with him, Violet and her friends jumping and laughing as they skipped along. His laughter followed them all the way to the ice cream stand.


	4. Fantasyland and Toontown

Sarah had anticipated a day full of walking—and she wasn’t proven wrong—but she certainly didn’t expect to sit as much as they did. In addition to rides, Disneyland apparently provided shows for all ages. They caught something at the Enchanted Tiki Room where they sat on benches and watched talking birds (and Lily dove into Chuck’s lap when the simulated lightning and thunder rolled). Chuck and the kids found benches whenever Sarah cycled the girls through the bathroom (which, she discovered, was the main reason Chuck had requested her for the agent on-duty that day, as neither he nor Casey could take the girls to the bathroom). They rode the train all around the park, the kids pointing out things they still wanted to see and Violet talking non-stop about how Major Casey Sir needed to come here and see the train that they’d named after him.

Lunch proved to be a sit-down ordeal on its own, as Lily, Landon, and Violet proved it indeed possible to argue over absolutely nothing for thirty-five minutes straight without stopping to draw breath. Thankfully, Chuck solved this three-way feud by stealing fries from all three plates and turning the kids against him. When they squawked their dismay, he pointed at Sarah, feigning innocence. The kids groaned and defended “Miss Sarah.” Miss Sarah celebrated by smirking—and popping one of Violet’s fries into her mouth.

After lunch, they took a break so that Chuck could call the moms and let the kids talk. He’d been texting pictures all morning, so Sarah was pretty sure Cynthia and Shae had a pretty good idea what their kids had been up to. It was still fun to hear everything they had seen and done in the kids’ words, though.

Once Landon had finished recounting the really, really awesome pineapple slushie Mr. Chuck had brought to let them all share after the Tiki Room, Chuck spread the map on the table and the kids all leaned forward on their elbows to get a good look. “So here’s how it’s going to be, soldiers,” Chuck said, squinting at each in turn like a general. “We’ve got a little while before we have to get over to the parade, so I think we can do a couple more rides. We’re going to go around in a circle, now. One at a time, which ones do we want to do?”

“Pirates of the Caribbean!”

“Okay, Lance Corporal Landon says Pirates. What about you, Major Megabyte?”

“Star Tours!”

“A woman after my own heart. Master Helmsman Moniqua?”

Moniqua thought long and hard about it for a minute, her little face scrunching from the concentration. “I want to see Jasmine,” she said at length, nodding her head once.

“A trip to the princesses, check.”

“I thought you liked Ariel the best!” Violet gave her best friend a scandalized look that made Sarah and Chuck have to cough very quickly to hide their laughter.

Moniqua shook her head. “Jasmine’s got a tiger.”

Sarah glanced at Chuck. “Cartoon,” he mouthed. “They don’t have an actual tiger here.”

Sarah leaned back in relief. She’d gone up against foes with some strange pets—most notably, a geneticist who had a fondness for the poisonous—and a tiger was one of those creatures that she would only be happy meeting in a zoo. From a distance. With very strong cage bars between them.

“All right,” Violet said. “That’s fair. You can like Jasmine best.”

“Thank you,” Moniqua said primly, and Sarah got the feeling she was more amused by Violet than anything else.

“And what do you want to do, Lieutenant Lily?” Chuck asked.

Lily squinted at the map, though Sarah wasn’t sure if she could read or not. “I want to see the princesses, too!”

“Excellent. So that’s two votes for the princesses, one for Star Tours, and one for the famous Captain Jack Sparrow and his mighty band of misfits. What about you, Sergeant Sarah?”

“I…want to do whatever the rest of you want to do,” Sarah said, as nothing on the map really stood out to her.

“Lame,” Chuck said. “The game is that you pick something you really want to ride. Isn’t that right, soldiers?”

“Yes, sir!”

Since she knew Chuck needed very little incentive to start the kids chanting yet again, Sarah quickly studied the map. Given the amount of time she’d spent poring over it the night before, it should have been easy, but she came up completely blank. “Are there, uh, bumper cars?”

“Well, there’s Autotopia…” Chuck scanned the map and appeared to give it some thought.

“What’s ah-to-auto—”

“Autotopia,” Chuck said absently. “We rode it last time we came, remember, Vi? We sat in the pink car.”

“Manly,” Sarah said.

“It was a very manly pink car.”

“I don’t remember that,” Violet said, frowning.

“You don’t? I let you drive and everything.”

“Can we go on it again?”

“I want to drive!” This, naturally, from Landon.

But Chuck was frowning, which wasn’t a good sign. “Hm, I think…yeah, you need an older person when they’re under six or seven, I think. And you can only fit two in a car.”

Sarah looked down at the four five-year-olds. Landon still had a ketchup smear next to his mouth, and Violet had spilled her milk on her Captain America shirt. There was no denying they were outnumbered two-to-one.

“Aw, man,” Landon said.

“However, there is a really fun ride with cars in Toontown, if I recall this right. And I think it might be perfect for Miss Sarah. What do you think, kids?”

“Yeah!” Claps and cheers again, though Chuck had neglected to actually mention which ride it was. Sarah narrowed her eyes at him, her suspicion only deepening when he gave her an angelic look.

“And what,” she said, nudging his ankle with the toe of her sneaker, “does Captain Chuck want to ride?”

She tilted her head, and even though it was the second time she’d used the double entendre, Chuck very quickly reached for his drink. Sadly, to be sure, it was non-alcoholic, but he downed half of it anyway.

“Ah,” he said, flustered, when the kids all gave him funny looks. “Uh…well, I’m a worldly man myself—”

“I bet.”

Chuck flushed deeper red. “So I was thinking—”

“It’s a small world!” Violet finished for him, clapping and jumping around in her chair. This time, Sarah saved the rest of her milk carton before it could upend over her shirt again. “It’s a small world, Daddy, right? It’s a small world?”

“It’s a small world, after all,” Chuck said solemnly. “All right, soldiers, we have our orders. Your mission, should you choose to accept it—”

Sarah rolled her eyes at him, and he smiled.

“—is to ride all of these rides and have fun. But first, we have to get this trash here,” and Chuck swept a hand over the table and the remains of their lunch, “into those trash cans there in a calm, orderly fashion that convinces the world that you’re well-mannered, respectable children and not secretly Goombas wearing masks. Ready?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Okay, go!”

It went well, more or less, though there was a bit of shoving between the siblings. They headed out as a group, the kids once again leading the way across the square, past the Dumbo ride they’d started their morning with, to a large, white building done up in gilt and gold. It looked like a mishmash of every type of architecture she’d ever seen, Sarah decided, and the different façades on the front were topped with pennants and Byzantine domes.

“Goombas!” Chuck called when the kids would have run up to the front and joined the line. “Picture time. Strike a pose!”

By now, they were old hands at this.

“Go on, get in the picture,” Chuck said, as he invariably did every time. This time, Sarah shrugged and knelt, not in the least surprised when the children gathered around, Violet sitting down on her leg and leaning back against the front of her shoulder, Moniqua hooking an arm around her neck, and the twins flanking them. Agent Walker was nowhere to be found by this point, Sarah figured.

Though she did know there was nobody following them and nobody had taken a questionable interest in them, so there was always that.

“And now,” Chuck said, grabbing her hands before one of the kids could as they headed up the line, “I really hope you like singing.”

“Why?” Sarah asked.

  


* * *

  


“It’s insidious,” Sarah said for the third time, scowling when Chuck laughed. “I’m going to have that song in my head for hours!”

“Oh, you optimist.”

“What?”

“You’re going to have that song in your head for _weeks_. Let’s be real here.”

“Insidious,” Sarah said again. “It’s just the same words, over and over again. For over three minutes. I counted. How do people listen to that all day?”

“After awhile of working the ride, I’m sure you mentally euthanize yourself. Girls, hang a left, you’re going on the wrong way!”

“You know, I should talk to the bosses,” Sarah said, musing as they walked past the _It’s a Small World_ building and on toward what her mental map labeled as Mickey’s Toontown. “It’s possible there could be uses for a thing like that in the field.”

“As what? Torture?” Chuck laughed, and then abruptly stopped laughing when he saw the look on her face. “You’re kidding, right? You’re…totally not kidding.”

Ahead of them, Violet and Lily were skipping and singing, “It’s a small, small world after all.”

Sarah gave Chuck a look: _See_?

“You have to admit, the little dolls were cute, and the technology behind it is very advanced—or it was, for its time. I mean, I rode that ride as a kid, and I’m sure earlier generations did, too. How many of those countries represented do you think you’ve visited?”

Sarah jerked a shoulder. “I lost count.”

“Man, so cool.”

“What?”

“I’m dating a globetrotting spy.”

“We’re not dating.”

“Yeah,” Chuck said, looking down. He’d grabbed her hand again after the ride. “Right.”

The ride Chuck had picked out as her selection turned out to be Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin. Sarah eyed it for a second and pulled out her phone, bringing up the reference map she’d downloaded onto her phone. “Um, Chuck?” She pulled him aside. “There are weasels on this ride.”

“Uh, so?”

“Violet didn’t exactly react…well to them on Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride.”

“Hm. I think she’ll be okay this time. I don’t think there are any sparks or anything. It’s mostly fire she’s not really big on.”

“If you say so,” Sarah said, but her voice was dubious.

“Tell you what. You distract the others, and give us a second. I’ll go talk to Violet.”

A couple of minutes, Violet and Chuck came back to where Sarah was once again debating the merits of _It’s a Small World_ as a torture device (Lily and Moniqua were now singing it). Violet immediately came up to Sarah. “Can I ride with you? Daddy says you’re better at fighting the bad guys than he is.”

Sarah gave Chuck a look: that really was an odd way to put it. He just grinned back.

“All right. Though maybe if there are bad guys, we can take them on together.”

“I’d like that very much,” Violet said in that formal way she had when she considered things Very Important.

This time, Violet didn’t spend the entire ride nestled against Sarah, shivering, though she did shriek a few times. Sarah, by now, was getting the hang of pointing things out and faking enthusiasm over things that generally puzzled her sensible agent side. Disneyland, she thought privately, would have seemed pretty cool to her as a five-year-old, so it wasn’t hard to feed off of their enthusiasm, though she could actually feel herself getting more and more tired as the day wore on.

It didn’t stop her from noticing something very important about Roger Rabbit’s Car Toon Spin.

“So,” she said to Chuck once she’d called Casey to check in and let him know there hadn’t been any threats in the past two hours. They were headed toward Star Tours now, which Chuck promised was another opportunity to sit down, and Sarah was looking forward to that. “I maybe noticed something about the Roger Rabbit ride.”

“Mm-hmm?”

“It’s your goal to point out each and every Disney character I look like, isn’t it?”

“I didn’t say you looked like Jessica Rabbit!” Though Chuck had a hard time hiding his grin. He held up both hands, one of them still holding the camera (they’d taken a picture outside of the ride again). “Though, you know, there might be similarities…”

“She’s a redhead,” Sarah said.

“Hey, I never said it. You did, not me.”

“And she’s all…” Sarah put her hands out in front of her to indicate a voluptuous woman, and Chuck nearly tripped from laughing so hard. She scowled. “We’re nothing alike.”

“Well, no, I wouldn’t ever call you a damsel in distress.”

“Exactly!”

“Of course, there are other things. Tall. Beautiful. Dating—”

“A rabbit?” Sarah asked, wrinkling her nose.

“I was going to say an unorthodox guy,” Chuck said.

“We’re not dating. And you’re not unorthodox. Just…well, at least you don’t wear overalls and a bowtie, and you aren’t covered in fur.”

“And my ears are a relatively normal size, too.” Chuck proved it by wiggling them—and had Sarah laughing in delight. “What? You didn’t know I could do that? Special skill of mine. I’m multitalented that way. Amazing that it’s not in my file.”

“It’s so weird,” Sarah said.

“You guys are taking _forever_ ,” Landon called back, as the kids had outpaced them by several feet. “Hurry up a little, will ya?”

“He’s a charmer. All right, all right, let’s get this show on the road. Princesses, Parade, and Pirates. Clearly this afternoon is brought to you by the letter P.”

“Can we take Sarah to meet Tink, too?” Violet wanted to know.

“If we have time, and if I can find some blood pressure medication first,” Chuck said, and that was that. “Does everybody have their autograph books?”

“I don’t want a princess signature. Princesses are stupid.”

“We know, Lan, we know. All right. Let’s go hobnob with the royals, shall we?”

This, Sarah thought as she followed the others toward the others to the large tent that marked the Princess Fantasy Faire, ought to be interesting. At least there wasn’t a tiger.


	5. The Princess and the Padawan

“There she is, there she is!” Violet hopped from one foot to the other, but Sarah had become so accustomed to this during her time in Burbank that she paid it no mind until Violet tugged on the hem of her shirt. “Sarah, it’s really her!”

Sarah debated for a few seconds about the merits of explaining that the woman in the blue dress with the blue elbow-length gloves was really an actor, and quickly dismissed it. Childhood was far too short, and reality far too quick in coming. So instead, she just raised both eyebrows and nodded. “Mm-hmm,” she said, which had become her go-to answer for these situations long before Chuck had even brought up the idea of a trip to Disneyland. “It really is.”

“What do you think she’s like?” Lily asked in a hushed voice, straining to peer around the twenty or so people in line in front of them. “Do you think she’ll be nice?”

“Of course,” Violet said, her voice scornful.

“Vi,” Sarah said warningly.

Violet looked abashed for a split-second. “I think princesses are always nice,” she said in a much more polite tone. “After all, Sarah’s a princess and she’s really nice.”

She’d been on some crazy missions in her day, Sarah thought, but none of them had ever involved getting togged up in dresses that looked like they weighed more than most of the five-year-olds gathered around. And sure, men tended to treat her like a queen, but it would be a long time before she’d willingly put on a tiara.

“I’m sure she’ll be really nice,” she said, hoping to end all of this “Sarah is a princess” talk. If that became a _thing_ with Violet, Sarah was going to take Chuck to task for that one. “Do you have your books ready to go?”

The three of them produced the little notebooks Ellie had picked up for them at Wal-Mart. She’d color-coded them, Sarah saw: Moniqua’s was red like the barettes in her hair, Lily had deep purple, and Violet’s of course had a pink cover. Girly colors, Sarah figured. She was partial to blue herself, but thankfully, Ellie hadn’t secured notebooks for the adults. Ellie was really the one that should be standing here with the girls, as she’d known them all their lives and could chatter on about the princesses for hours. This was a world Ellie was comfortable in. Sarah wasn’t sure she would ever feel comfortable, but the fact that she was now temporarily facing it without Chuck as backup really made it worse.

Chuck had taken pity on Landon and had hauled the boy off to hit up Pirates of the Caribbean while the girls met with the princesses. Sarah figured part of that was to keep the peace: Lily and Landon’s sniping had taken an ugly turn on their walk toward the princess tent, signaling bad things to come, so they’d made the decision to split the groups up for a little while. It was unnerving being outnumbered three-to-one, especially since all of the other women and men in the line looked comfortable with their charges, but Sarah reminded herself that she’d once jumped off of a forty-foot wall and onto some awnings and had escaped drug lords with nary a scratch.

It didn’t make her feel a great deal better, but every little bit helped.

The line crawled forward. Violet let out a breathless little squeal that made Sarah smile, but Moniqua and Lily looked thoroughly bored. Without Chuck around to joke with the kids, it wasn’t nearly as fun waiting in line, no matter their excitement. Sarah wished she knew more of those little games Chuck had been playing with them all day.

“So tell me about this Cinderella,” she said, kneeling down so that she was on their level.

The three of them stared at her, wide-eyed. Finally, Lily spoke for the group. “You never seen _Cinderella_?”

 _Probably shouldn’t have admitted that, Walker_.

“It’s okay,” Violet said to the others, defending her territory. Protectiveness just seemed to be a Bartowski trait. She turned to Sarah, all smiles. “I have the DVD at home, you can borrow it if you want.”

“Why don’t you tell me the story now, while we’re waiting?”

Together, talking over each other with a few asides from Moniqua, the two girls managed to cobble together a tale of a girl with a horrible stepmother and awful stepsisters who was ferried to a castle in a pumpkin drawn by mouse horses and dog people. Sarah blinked at that, but gamely tried to keep up. Even better, her decidedly lame joke about Cinderella taking a pumpkin-colored taxi made them all giggle.

By the time the handsome prince had saved Cinderella from a destitute life (her words, not theirs), they’d reached the front of the line, and then the guide was leading the girls up to meet the famous Cinderella. Sarah gave Moniqua a bolstering smile when she looked over her shoulder, obviously apprehensive. When the girl turned around to follow her friends, Sarah moved to where she could get a good picture.

The actress playing Cinderella probably saw hundreds of girls every day with the same questions, but she still smiled graciously at the trio and signed their books. Violet looked so completely star-struck that Sarah hid her laughter behind a cough for the third or fourth time that day. And then she heard Violet’s voice cut easily across the space between them. “Oh, that’s Miss Sarah. She’s like Tink, but way better cos she’s nicer to me than Tink is to Wendy.” A pause. “I think my daddy _really_ likes her.”

“Do you want a picture with Miss Sarah up here?”

“Can we? Sarah! Sarah!” Violet jumped and waved, as though Sarah were standing miles rather than feet away. “Come get a picture! Her name means princess, too.” The last was said for Cinderella’s benefit.

“We’re practically sisters, apparently,” Sarah said under her breath. Seeing no escape, she handed over her camera and crouched down next to Lily in the picture as they gathered around Cinderella’s throne.

She really hoped Casey never saw the pictures.

They repeated the ordeal with Belle from _Beauty and the Beast_ and thankfully caught the stunning Jasmine when there wasn’t a line. By the time the princesses left the Faire to go get ready for the parade, the girls had accumulated quite a few signatures, and Chuck and Landon had returned.

Sarah straightened immediately from where was watching the girls take turns at the drinking fountain. The evidence of tear tracks on Landon’s face might as well have been a shout. “Did something happen?”

“Everything’s all good.” Chuck let Landon hop down off of his back and the boy immediately latched onto Sarah very much like Violet often did, wrapping both arms around her forearm and hugging it to his chest. “Pirates is down for maintenance today.”

“Oh no,” Sarah said.

“But we had a good time, didn’t we, buddy?”

“We saw Buzz,” Landon said, rubbing at his nose with the back of his wrist. Sarah managed to hide her wince when he grabbed her arm again.

“And that was pretty cool, right? And we got to see Indy.” Chuck said the last bit proudly.

At this, Landon’s eyes lit up a little. “Mr. Chuck let me drive and there was a really big boulder that I thought was gonna crush us, but then, whoosh, we went right into the floor, and it was so cool. I wasn’t scared _at all_.”

Sarah didn’t have the first clue who “Indy” was or why a boulder would crush anybody, but she had to guess it was some sort of ride. “I bet not. You boys missed out on all of our fun girl time.”

“We saw _four_ princesses,” Lily said.

“Princesses are stupid.”

“Nuh-uh. Belle was really neat, but Aurora was better, she was really pretty and she looked even more like Miss Sarah than Tink does!”

“Did she?” Chuck seemed very interested in that. He craned his neck. “Is she still around? I want to see this for myself.”

“We have pictures!” Violet grabbed the camera from Sarah before Sarah could think to stop her. She proved herself the Daughter of Bartowski once again by finding the picture faster than Sarah ever could have, and waved it proudly at her father. “See? That’s us, and Sarah, and Princess Aurora, who kept yawning.”

“She just woke up from a really long nap.”

The girls giggled at their joke. For a _Sleeping Beauty_ bit, Sarah thought, it was pretty cute.

“Wow,” Chuck said, and he waggled his eyebrows at Sarah. “We found your princess twin.”

“I think she looks more like Tink,” Violet said, stubborn now.

“Guess we won’t know until we see her wear both dresses.”

The girls’ eyes all brightened. As one, they turned to Sarah with expectant faces. She saw nothing but wolves descending on their prey and vowed her revenge on Chuck on the spot.

“Isn’t it time for the parade?” she asked.

“Nice save,” Chuck said as the girls all cheered and scrambled to lead the way to Main Street, where Mickey’s Soundsational Parade would spill across the flagstones. Landon, never one to be left behind, hurried after them. Chuck took the opportunity to grab her hand again. “Good thing they’re small and easily distracted by shiny things, huh?”

“Good thing,” Sarah said.

“Though they’ll remember eventually.”

“I’m sure I can find something equally shiny to distract them all over again.”

“I’m sure you can.”

“And I plan to get you back for that, by the way. You won’t know it’s coming.” Sarah had a hard time holding her smile back, but she kept her look solemn only through sheer force of will. Chuck looked a little more tired and a little ragged at the edges, just the way she felt, but his eyes were still alight with that amusement that had clung to him all throughout the day. Some of it, she knew, was directed at her and the sheer amount of awkwardness she’d been battling all day. But on top of that, he did genuinely look thrilled to be at Disneyland, surrounded by all of this light and frenzy and fun. He really was a big kid at heart when he let himself be. Sarah raised her eyebrow at him. “But one day, I will have my revenge.”

“How very dramatic. Now when you say that, do you mean you’ll actually get your payback and I should actually be scared, or is it like the whole ‘we’re not dating’ thing you keep saying?”

Sarah shoved him a little. “We’re _not_ dating,” she said, laughing. “You’re starting to believe our cover.”

“Gee, wonder why.” Again, Chuck looked down at their joined hands with a mildly sarcastic look. “Face it, Sarah Walker, we’re dating. Though I really should give the matter some consideration, since you did make my daughter cry. On Christmas day.”

Sarah’s jaw dropped, and she spluttered. “That was—that was half your fault,” she said.

If Chuck’s grin were any wider, it would split his face in two even halves. “How so?”

“It just was!”

“And to think, I thought it was going to be Casey that made her cry first, but nope, the great Sarah Wal—oh, frak, he’s going for the fountain. Landon, no, don’t do that!” Chuck darted off and thankfully snatched the boy from the edge of the fountain before he could tumble in face-first.

“Somebody threw Spidey in there,” Landon said, scowling as he was hauled away from the lip of the fountain. “A whole Spider-man.”

“Maybe somebody made a wish on Spidey,” Chuck said, and Sarah finally spotted the little red and blue action figure that Landon had obviously been about to dive for.

“So?”

“Pulling him out means that wish won’t come true. I think we’d best leave Spidey to his…ah, fate.” Chuck glanced down at the fountain and pretended to look around at their ragtag group with shock. “What’s this? You’re not ready for the parade yet?”

The kids all gave him quizzical looks. Since she really wasn’t sure where Chuck was going with this, Sarah joined them.

“How’s Mickey gonna see us if we’re not wearing our mouse ears?”

Buying them all hats with plastic circles that denoted ears turned out to be a bigger ordeal than Sarah ever wanted to remember, so she shoved that to the back of her mind and instead kept a grip on Landon and Moniqua outside the crowded store as Chuck paid for their purchase.

At Vi’s insistence, they hadn’t forgotten Major Casey Sir. It even said his full name—well, Vi’s full name for him, anyway—across the back in bright gold thread. “He’s going to _love_ it,” the five-year-old breathed, holding her prize aloft as though it were the biggest trophy on the planet. “I’m gonna give it to him straightaway when we get home. Is that okay, Daddy?”

“Maybe we’ll wait until tomorrow, Megabyte. When Sarah has her camera ready.”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah muttered. “Throw _me_ under the bus. I see how it is.” Chuck just grinned.

“We got you a set, too,” Violet said as Sarah let the others wander free, and they moved to find a space on the curb to watch the parade. “They’re pink, like mine.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Daddy got black ones, but yours have your name and everything.” It was apparently a task to search through the bag and walk at the same time for Violet, so Sarah ignored her aching arms and scooped the girl up. Violet fumbled with the bag as they set up camp on the curb and prepared to await the parade. “Here it is!”

Sarah stared at the ears. They were cheap plastic disks attached to a bright pink cloth bowl with Minnie Mouse right in the middle. They looked more ridiculous in the adult size, unlike the small cap Violet wore.

 _Trust Chuck to buy me pink ears_ , she thought, and had to grin over that as Violet reached up and carefully put the ears on her head, her face screwed up in concentration. “There,” she said.

“How do I look?”

“Pretty! How do I look?”

“Beautiful,” Sarah said, and they grinned at each other in their matching caps, with her still holding Violet on her hip.

When they heard the unmistakable click of a shutter, they both looked over, to see Chuck holding his camera. “Got it,” he said, but he looked entirely solemn. Sarah nearly shivered at the sudden gravity of the moment, though the weather had been amazingly pleasant all day.

“Got what? I want to see, Daddy, I want to see!” Violet wriggled down as Sarah fought off the momentary and instinctual panic at having her photograph taken unexpectedly. _It’s just Disneyland. It’s just Chuck. Spy holiday._ Fighting off a sudden spurt of nerves, she took a seat on the curb next to Landon in his Goofy hat and Lily in her conical princess cap and squinted down the street to await the parade.

Though she cheered with others when the marching bands and the dancing troupes skipped down the street, it took a long time for her to hear much over the sound of her own heartbeat.

  


* * *

  


The last destination of the day was Star Tours, the _Star Wars_ flight simulator Violet and Chuck had talked about non-stop for the last few days. It lived up to the hype, though Sarah personally found it neater to see the kids’ reactions to the animatronic droids that were standing around beside the line into the simulator. She grinned to herself. The kids? Chuck had been positively beside himself with glee. He’d gotten everybody’s picture, one at a time, by R2-D2, and had insisted Sarah take a picture with his phone so that he could text Morgan and show the other man what he was missing.

“You sure that’s fair?” Sarah had asked.

Chuck had just laughed. “He could have come if he wanted.”

“And then I’d be herding along six kids instead of four.” Sarah had smiled to take the sting out of her tease.

“He’s got a very impressive beard for a kid, don’t you think?”

“Most impressive.”

Now, they’d survived the flight simulator, they’d gone on their laundry list of rides, and Sarah could see quite a few eyelids drooping. Her own feet were beginning to weep, so she was grateful that Chuck decided they’d just have to catch Fantasmic on another day.

“Plus,” he whispered to her as they gathered around outside the exit of Star Tours to tie shoelaces, “there’s a really big explosion in Fantasmic and I think Vi’s had enough.”

Speaking of Violet…Sarah craned her neck to get a good look around. Thankfully, Violet had only wandered away a few feet. “Vi, honey, stay close,” she called as she crouched down in front of Moniqua to retie her shoes. “Did you have a good day?”

“The best,” Moniqua said in that solemn, whispery way she had.

“Awesome. I did, too,” Sarah said, and was rewarded with one of Moniqua’s megawatt smiles.

“Sarah.”

The whisper made her look over at Chuck, who was staring wide-eyed at something behind her. Agent Walker immediately took over. “Did you just flash?”

“No. _Look_.”

Sarah turned, still kneeling in front of Moniqua. It was actually the noise that caught her first, the sound of a respirator hissing in and out. And since Violet had brought her copy of _Star Wars_ over the last time Casey and Chuck had gone on a mission and left the girl’s care to her, she recognized it right away.

Even then, she still blinked in shock to see a very realistic Darth Vader standing in the middle of the sidewalk ten feet away from them, flanked by a pair of men in white carapace-looking armor that she vaguely recalled were Stormtroopers. The Dark Lord of the Sith loomed up, a fearsome figure in black, from the top of his polished helmet, down the red and blue and green sensors across his broad chest, down his sweeping cape, and finally onto the humongous black boots.

He was staring downward.

Little Violet Bartowski, all four foot nothing, stared right back up. Her jaw had dropped and she had her head back, tilted comically at an angle as she gazed up at Darth Vader.

Sarah had no idea how long that standoff went on for, while they all stood trapped in that moment in time. She remembered herself and moved—to do what, she didn’t know, possibly scoop up Violet or go hold Violet’s hand—but Chuck grabbed her arm. “Shh,” he said. “I want to see what happens.”

Even the other kids seemed silent with shock.

Darth Vader was _huge_.

The respirator noise continued to hiss in, hiss out. Sarah felt the tension mount until finally, finally Violet blinked. She slowly raised one arm, her hand palm out and relaxed, and waved it in the air across her front.

“These are not,” she said, her voice never wavering, “the droids you’re looking for.”

And right then and there, Chuck Bartowski lost it and actually fell to the concrete, laughing hysterically. “Best day ever!”


	6. Picture Perfect

“As promised, your adult beverage.” Chuck nudged her hand with what she had to assume was a wineglass, though she didn’t open her eyes, even when she’d wrapped her fingers around it and taken the wine. “And, as a bonus, this is yours, too, I think.”

Sarah didn’t open her eyes this time either, though Chuck deposited a giggling five-year-old on top of her. Since she was stretched out over the Bartowski couch, shoes kicked off, she merely turned over a bit and wrapped her free arm around Vi’s middle, pulling the child against her. “How does she still have energy?” she asked, as Vi was wriggling. She opened one eye to stare at the girl, who peered back. “How do you still have so much energy?”

“Daddy says it’s cos I got the Force.”

“Indeed. Scoot over a bit, let me sit with you.”

Sarah shifted her feet an inch. Chuck laughed, picked up her legs, and sat under her calves. “I think Sarah’s tired, Megabyte.”

“Ngh.”

“She’s speaking strange languages, too.”

“Like the ‘Woks!”

“The whats?”

“Ewoks,” Chuck said. “Think midget teddy bear people.”

Sarah opened the one eye again and gave him a baleful stare. “Ngh,” she said a second time, and Vi leaned back against her. She was an operative of the CIA, used to going on missions where you were never sure where the next food, water, shelter, or sleep was going to come from, and a day at Disneyland had exhausted her to the point where all of her limbs felt like they would literally melt against the couch cushions. If she’d had more energy, she might have been embarrassed about that.

“We wore Sarah out, Megabyte,” Chuck said. “I didn’t think it was possible, but we did it.”

“D’you think it was the princesses? We walked _forever_ and ever to go see Belle and Jasmine, and I thought I was going to _die_ , but we saw them, and Belle gave me a hug and told me that she would tell the Beast hello for me, even though he wasn’t there. But I’m very sad Sarah never got to meet Tink.”

“Me too,” Chuck said solemnly, and Sarah didn’t kick him only because she felt too tired, and she tried not to be too violent in front of Violet. Though she thought about it. And the twinkle in Chuck’s eye told her he knew exactly what she was thinking. He leaned over her legs to set the wineglass on the coffee table next to Violet’s glass of milk, and picked up the camera.

“But it was really funny when we saw Mickey and we all shouted for Sarah to take her picture with him and then she kissed his cheek.”

She’d also popped her leg up like an old fifties starlet, Sarah thought, all because a bunch of kids were chanting at her, led by her asset. Hopefully Casey never saw that picture.

“And Mickey was all embarrassed and stuff, but Minnie didn’t come over and try to take her man back, which I thought was lame.”

Sarah’s eyes shot open in surprise, as Chuck was now gallantly hiding his laughter as he played with the camera. “Where on earth did you hear that phrase?”

“That’s how Moniqua’s Aunt Ray talks.” Violet looked puzzled. “Is it bad?”

“No, no, just…surprising.”

Chuck put his free arm across the back of the couch. “Do you think Sarah could take Minnie Mouse in a fight?” he asked Vi.

Violet scrutinized Sarah for such a long time that Chuck began to shake with laughter again. “Uh-huh,” Violet said. “I _think_ so. But I don’t know…”

“Oh, so you think I could get my as—butt kicked by a mouse, do you?” Sarah finally sat up and set her wine to the wide, which allowed her to pounce in for a tickle fight.

It was past bath time (a hated ordeal at the Bartowski household) and past bedtime, but the five-year-old was practically vibrating with energy, her hair curly and damp and her beloved Dora the Explorer pajamas on. She’d grown a little so that her ankles and wrists stuck out of them. Now, her giggles turned to shrieks as she squirmed away, trying to seek refuge between her father and the arm of the couch. “Help me, Daddy!”

“And fight Sarah off? Minnie Mouse can _definitely_ take me in a fight, so I know Sarah can. You’re on your own, Megabyte.”

“Eek!” Violet scrambled over the back of the couch, hopped down, and did a couple of laps around the kitchen island. The adults watched her go, their eyebrows raised.

“She’s going to crash any minute now,” Chuck said, turning slightly so that he was facing forward.

Sarah realized that her tickle fight with Violet had basically landed her on Chuck’s lap, one leg across the both of his, her elbow leveraging her up against the back of the couch so that she was slightly over him. He looked up from the camera to give her an absent sort of smile, and froze as he realized exactly how they were positioned, too.

And of course, Violet scrambled over the back of the couch again and did a belly flop into Sarah’s lap, making Chuck groan. Sarah snatched the squirming kid up and fell backwards, taking Vi with her. “Monkey!” Violet shrieked, throwing both hands up in the air like a victor taking his glory lap. “I’m a monkey!”

“You’re something,” Sarah said, shifting and putting her feet on the floor. “Here, let’s make sure your Aunt Ellie gets some sleep tonight and have a look at some of the pictures your dad took.”

“Okay.” Violet scrambled from Sarah’s lap to Chuck’s. “Ooh. That’s a really nice one, Daddy.”

“What is it?”

“The inside of my pocket,” Chuck said, giving his daughter a sour look and booting her gently atop the head with the side of his hand. “Uncle Morgan should never have taught you sarcasm.”

“What’s sarcasm?”

“We’ll put off that lesson until you’re much older. After your teens, if we’re lucky.”

“Good luck with that one,” Sarah said.

Chuck gave her a pained look and scooted closer so that Sarah could look at the pictures with them. “Here’s the group at the front gates. Lily’s blinking in this one, Landon’s making a face here, blink from Mo, both Landon and Vi are blinking in this one and I don’t know what Lily’s looking at…”

Violet giggled.

“And here we are, about to ride Dumbo. Another charming face from Landon.”

“He thought Dumbo was stupid.”

“The joke’s on him, though,” Sarah said. “Dumbo looked like a lot of fun.”

“It was so much fun,” Violet said, drawing the word “so” out over several syllables. The first yawn broke through, and Chuck and Sarah exchanged a glance over her head. By the time Chuck had thumbed through to pictures of the parade, she was soundly asleep, draped across Chuck’s arm with her hair flowing down toward the floor like a sandy brown waterfall.

“And she’s out,” Chuck said. “I should probably get her up to bed.”

“And I should probably get home,” Sarah said, glancing at the surveillance camera they’d hidden in a picture frame on the mantle. “It’s getting late.”

“You should at least finish your wine. I mean, you did survive Disneyland, a glass of wine is the least I could do to repay you.”

“Survive is a good way to put it,” Sarah said, and Chuck laughed as he shifted Violet until she was sacked out of his shoulder like a bag of potatoes. They were almost out of the room when Sarah spotted a forlorn platypus claw sticking out from the under the coffee table. “Chuck.”

“Yeah?” He turned.

“Catch.” Sarah tossed Bun-Bun, and Chuck fielded the stuffed animal one-handed, nodding his thanks. The minute they were gone, Sarah sank back into the couch cushions. She hadn’t lied—she needed to go home and confer with Casey to make sure the bosses hadn’t checked in with any orders—but she didn’t feel quite up to moving yet.

After Violet’s encounter with Vader, the kids had talked Chuck into just one more ride, just one more, please, Mr. Chuck. So they’d made Landon’s day by riding Astro Blasters. Sarah had discovered that the Buzz that Landon had mentioned was actually Buzz Lightyear, Space Ranger. And more importantly, she’d impressed every single kid by beating even Chuck’s score with the laser guns. Even though Chuck had demanded a rematch, the kids were too tired; they’d picked up some souvenirs for Lily and Landon’s sick younger brother, and Vi’s uncles and aunts, and they had left. Sarah had sprung for fast food on the way home.

So now, she’d eaten far too much junk food, her face felt a little sunburned even for January, her feet were practically sobbing, she felt _sticky_ and frazzled, and a little like she might simply sink into the earth in this very spot and never get up again.

By the time Chuck came back, she had moved an inch. It took more effort than storming the Kurdish stronghold of one sheikh whose name was still redacted in most CIA reports, he was so paranoid and politically connected.

“You look exhausted,” Chuck said as he sat down on the couch next to her and reached for his wine.

“Not really words a girl ever wants to hear, for the record.”

“Well, you look beautiful, but I get the feeling that goes without saying.”

Sarah had to smile at the compliment. She found the energy to stretch, and yawn. “Still better than exhausted,” she said once she’d finished. Chuck laughed and conceded the point with a tilt of his head. Silence fell for a minute while Sarah rested her head against the back of the couch and stared mindlessly at the ceiling. “Thank you for going today,” Chuck said at length.

Sarah lifted her head, which took almost too much effort. “No sweat.”

“I know it’s…not really in the CIA training manual or whatever to chaperone trips to Disneyland, so I’m grateful that you were willing to tag along and put up with a lot. Thanks for playing along, too.”

“Playing along?”

“You know, getting into it, doing things with the group. One five-year-old is a handful. Four of them is the Hindenburg in the making.”

“I’m just glad that we got through it without something like the Hindenburg happening,” Sarah said.

Chuck grinned and swirled the wine in his glass, something that seemed more like habit than anything conscious. “This morning when I came out to meet you at the van, you looked like it already had.”

“I was—”

“Scared?”

“Cautious,” Sarah corrected for the second time that day. “I lack the skill set for chaperoning a trip to Disneyland.”

“Oh?” Real interest colored Chuck’s voice as he turned toward her. “And what is that, pray tell?”

“Being good with kids. I am _not_ good with kids.”

“You’re great with Vi.”

“That doesn’t count.”

“No?”

“It’s Violet. She’s does all the work for you.” Sarah scrunched her nose up as she thought about it. “Kind of like a cat. You stand still and she’ll just rub against your leg or hold your hand. She’s a great kid.”

“And what do you call your interactions with Landon?”

“Mostly awkward,” Sarah said, completely honest now.

Chuck laughed. “Are you kidding? He adored you.”

“What? I knew you said he was flirting—”

“Landon acts out a lot,” Chuck said, “because he wants attention, and that’s the only way he can get it. But you took the time to listen to him and even joke around with him. That was the best behaved I have ever seen him. Trust me, the trip could have been much, much worse.”

Sarah frowned. “Oh.”

“And Moniqua thinks you’re pretty great, too. I heard her telling Violet so when you were in the bathroom.”

There was something he wasn’t telling her about that, Sarah decided, as Chuck wouldn’t quite meet her eyes then. She tilted her head and gave him a “no nonsense now” stare. “How exactly did she put it?”

“Ah…that’s not the point. The point is, you’re better with kids than you think.”

“I don’t know,” Sarah said. She still couldn’t believe she had made it through an entire day at Disneyland with four kids. It felt surreal, like it had been somebody else with them, not her. “They still make me nervous.”

Chuck laughed. “Why? It’s not like you’re going to break them if you look at them wrong.”

“It feels like it.”

“Well, you won’t, I promise. You’re a pretty great person. Just be yourself, and kids’ll pick up on that.”

But I’m not, Sarah wanted to say even as she felt Chuck’s compliment, offhand or not, course through her, warm and fluttering. I’m not a good person. I’m a spy.

Her brain finally put it together, what Moniqua might have said that made Chuck glance away now. “Moniqua called me Vi’s new mom, didn’t she?”

Chuck stared at his wine as he nodded his head, just once.

And just like that, the elephant was back in the room with them. Chuck was once again the asset, Sarah the agent, and their cover had become too real. Everything felt thick and awkward and oppressing once more.

“It’s not a big deal,” Chuck said. “I mean, they’re five. For all they know, we’ve been dating for months, and you know how kids are, prone to flights of fancy. I mean, last week Vi asked me if we ever have to move, if we could move to the Enterprise.”

“The what?”

“Morgan’s been showing her old Star Trek episodes. It’s not important. And remember back when you first got out to Burbank, Vi basically outright asked you to start giving her brothers and sisters. You know how they are. Kids get ideas.”

“Yeah,” Sarah said, but she wasn’t thinking about the first time Violet had come over to the Spy Casa. Instead, she was remembering something much more recent. “And the first thing she said to me was ‘Mommy,’ so I guess it’s to be expected.” Chuck said something under his breath, and she didn’t quite make anything out but “Gonna kill Morgan.” She smiled, though it quickly faded.

“I want to see the picture,” she said.

Chuck raised his eyebrows. To his credit, he didn’t have to ask which picture she meant, though they must have taken hundreds throughout the day. He thumbed right to it and angled the camera so that Sarah could see.

Objectively, the picture wasn’t anything special. A woman and a child grinning at each other, looking silly in their commercialized hats, just another piece of everyday life. The girl had milk stains on her shirt, the woman’s sunglasses were crooked.

But subjectively, the picture still hit like a fist to the solar plexus. She didn’t smile like that very often. That sort of smile, that happiness and the shared fun of the moment, that wasn’t part of any cover.

“You look like her mom,” Chuck finally said, his voice quiet.

Sarah swallowed hard, to buy herself a second. “I don’t think Sophie and I really look that much alike,” she said, deliberately misunderstanding him.

He looked at her, and she knew that he knew she’d done that on purpose, but Chuck eventually just moved a shoulder a fraction and put the camera away. “Yeah,” was all he said.

The spy holiday, Sarah thought, was officially over. No more carelessly holding hands, even though it had felt like the most natural thing in the world, no more double entendre flirting. They were back to being a cover in some company, a spy and an asset for others.

Neither of them looked at the camera embedded in the picture frame.

“Don’t let Casey see that picture,” Sarah said, too quietly for the mics to pick up. “Please.”

Chuck nodded again. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Thank you.”

She could read the expression on Chuck’s face easily, the _we will talk about this someday and you won’t be able to evade_ , but he let it drop for now, and she couldn’t help but be grateful. A day at Disneyland with four kids was scary, the sort of implications, that she could be any type of mother to anybody, let alone Violet…that went beyond scary. That went into realms so terrifying her mind automatically slammed a steel door shut over them.

“Hey,” Chuck said, and his smile was back, the easy, relaxed one that said the heavy moment was now over. “Do you want to see the best picture we took today?”

Nothing would top the mouse ears photograph, but Sarah said, “Sure.”

“Look at this.” Chuck thumbed over a few times and then handed her the camera. Sarah burst out laughing. “Fantastic, right?”

“I’m so glad she made me watch _Star Wars_ or I wouldn’t have the first clue what’s going on,” Sarah said, giggling now. Violet’s little show with Darth Vader had apparently impressed the Dark Lord so much that he’d allowed them to goof off with their pictures. Therefore, Sarah had obligingly snapped one shot after the next of Chuck (standing out of the frame) dangling Violet by the seat of her pants while Vader held up a hand. It looked like Vader was lifting the five-year-old by the sheer power of the Force alone, Chuck’s hand aside. Even better was the awestruck look on Violet’s face.

“That’s remarkable,” Sarah went on.

“Proudest moment of my life.” Chuck mimed wiping away a tear. “And yes, it will be brought up at every big occasion. Birthdays, graduations…Tuesdays…”

“I’m sure she won’t get tired of hearing about it at all. As if there were any question whose daughter she was.”

“I know,” Chuck said, still beaming. “I don’t think anything can ever top that, but then, Violet surprises me with something new every day, so who knows?”

“Who knows,” Sarah echoed, handing the camera back to him. She should go, she thought. Even though it had just been a day at Disneyland, there was still a little paperwork to fill out, expenses to cover, so on and so forth. And she’d been here far too long already, far longer than an agent should be when it was just an asset.

But she made no move to leave, and Chuck didn’t bring it up. They just sipped their wine in silence for a few minutes, Sarah trying not to think about a picture and Chuck smiling at Violet’s visit with Vader.

Finally, he cleared his throat. “So,” he said. “You’ve officially survived Disneyland.”

“I have,” Sarah said cautiously, recognizing that look in Chuck’s eye.

“You could even say that, having been tossed in the deep end as you were, you’re now a theme park expert.”

“I wouldn’t go that far.”

“I would. I think we need to test your skills.”

“Chuck,” Sarah said, a warning note in her voice.

“And we couldn’t live in a more perfect spot for it. I mean, you’ve cut your teeth on the Disneyland Park, but now there’s Disneyland, California Adventure. And Knott’s Berry Farm.”

Sarah stared. “You’re kidding, right?”

“And of course we can’t miss out on Universal Studios—you’ll like that one, lots more Star Wars for Vi to love—and there’s Six Flags Magic Mountain, and we would be really remiss if we skipped out on visiting Legoland in San Diego and deprived Vi of the chance of seeing Darth Vader made entirely out of Legos.”

“You’re totally not kidding,” Sarah said.

“If we’re desperate, we could even consider going upstate and visiting Marine World.”

“I’m going home,” Sarah said, climbing to her feet. Chuck did the same and followed her to the door.

“And who’s to say we should stop at Disneyland? Disneyworld’s where it’s at, I hear. So much bigger, and more rides, too.”

“Good night, Chuck.” Sarah opened the door.

“We’ll have to take Moniqua, at least, so that Vi won’t be stuck with a bunch of lame adults for her only companions. And Lily and Landon will feel left out if we don’t include them. Maybe by then Moniqua’s baby brother will be old enough to—mmph.”

Since they were safely out of range of the camera, Sarah cut off Chuck’s gleeful little spiel by grabbing the front of his T-shirt, yanking him close, and kissing him quickly. It ended far, far too soon, just like always. Time was just one thing they didn’t have: Casey would probably be watching the feeds, and any anomalies could get them into trouble.

But this time, she just couldn’t help herself. The spy holiday wasn’t over yet. She broke off the kiss. While Chuck blinked at her in shock, she slipped out the front door and into the night.

She’d made it all the way up to her bedroom, shoving Sir aside, before she realized that she’d left her shoes in the Bartowski living room. Just like, her brain whispered, Cinderella had left her glass slipper on the steps of the palace.

The comparison made her laugh. Maybe she had more in common with the princesses than she thought.


End file.
